


Five Elements

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drama, War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2005-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3804283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Fellowship drabbles in answer to the Five Elements challenge, using Spirit as the Fifth Element.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fire : Gimli

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

Fleeing from the chasm, from torch lit dark to day, from the vision of Gandalf falling, he remembered the old smith, all glinting eye and sparse beard, hands holding a tray upon which, amazingly burning, pooled a dark liquid, saying “All things are Fire. You need only know how to release it. By this secret are you the children of Durin” and even though he now knew it was no magic, some liquids burn, the wonder never left, all things were Fire, especially his heart, so hot that the burning wculd not be quenched by the blood of a hundred.


	2. Boromir: Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five Fellowship drabbles in answer to the Five Elements challenge, using Spirit as the Fifth Element.

The river moved, but the paddles held them still, and they were quiet; watching the rope as it pulled taut, keeping the other boat close.  
  
They imagined him sleeping, but never had he rested so carelessly, whom peace had deserted months ago.  
  
The dwarf and the elf waited, not knowing what alien custom would signal the release of the rope.  
  
A breath of sound, sigh?, regret?, then the river moved the other boat away. Lightly it lay on the water as if nothing remained except memory.  
  
The boat became a spot in the distance, then vanished. They broke their silence then, to not hear the roar of the waters.


	3. Earth: Legolas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five Fellowship drabbles in answer to the Five Elements challenge, using Spirit as the Fifth Element.

Between one breath and its follower, all things changed.

The familiar sense of earth, of leaf and tree and stock and stone, and of his place in that orderly creation, a sense always with him even here where the things of earth were overlaid with the fleeting handwork of mortals, became suddenly a trap for wild things, woven of a thousand painful strands against which his spirit must struggle, striving to follow that one true clear note hidden in the strange and piercing cry of the sea birds.

“Alas the wailing of the gulls. And now I cannot forget them.”


	4. Air: Gandalf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five Fellowship drabbles in answer to the Five Elements challenge, using Spirit as the Fifth Element.

There was a long, dark nothingness until he heard the Voice, felt the long, considering gaze, and knew he was no longer in the flesh. 

Naked, he had returned home.

Had he failed altogether, he wondered? Was his purpose ended?

With every passing second it grew stronger, this freedom of movement, this sharpness of seeing and knowing. He rejoiced, regaining himself, but the memory of Frodo's face as he fell was both strong and bitter.

He answered the Voice as it knew he would, as he must, and leapt far, flying free, before he fell again, clothed once more.


	5. Spirit: Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five Fellowship drabbles in answer to the Five Elements challenge, using Spirit as the Fifth Element.

In later years, when the pain and joy and loss had faded from long review, he found he could make no song of what he had learned in those dark days.

It became the one story he could not tell the children gathering by his knee, or the dear heart always by his side.

Nor were there words which fit the carefull marshalling of names and dates in the Book.

Sometimes he slipped outside and looked up, feeling no need to speak of what had made him, found long ago in the light of the stars, fierce, steadfast and eternal.


	6. Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five Fellowship drabbles in answer to the Five Elements challenge, using Spirit as the Fifth Element.

I wrote most of these at least two years ago, but left one of the chapters (Water) unfinished, and in the meantime lost both what I had written, and whatever my original intention had been, so perhaps the chapter written last doesn't carry through the original idea as clearly. I also had no energy to edit out enough words to keep it to true drabble length.  
  
I think part of my original thought was to associate each element with someone from the Fellowship, but not with the most immediately obvious person-obvious to me, at least. Thus, Gandalf could not be Fire, and Gimli could not be Earth, and Frodo could not be Spirit.  
  
Thank you for reading.


End file.
